Naughty Dog sticking with current gen engine for next gen games

Naughty Dog has no plans to create a new engine for its PlayStation 4 game development, the studio’s game director Bruce Straley told Digital Spy. He went on to say that the developer made a mistake when they created a brand new engine for Uncharted at the start of the PS3 generation.

“We scrapped everything at the beginning of Uncharted 1, and we had a perfectly good engine with the Jak & Daxter franchise [on PS2],” he said. “We could have started with something there and then built off of it and only changed the pieces and parts as we needed, when we needed. And that really caused a lot of turmoil.”

Instead of repeating past mistakes, Naughty Dog will use the same “Naughty Dog Engine” that it’s used for the Uncharted games and The Last of Us, for development of PS4 games. The developer will simply add to or improve it as needed. Financially, it’s a good move for Naughty Dog. Developing, or even licensing and modifying a new engine is both costly and time consuming. Keeping its current engine means that the devleopment costs on the next Naughty Dog game will be lower, and the development time will be shortened. It also makes it slightly easier to release on the PS3 and the PS4 simultaneously.

Naughty Dog has yet to announce any next-gen games, but clearly the studio has something in the works. Maybe we’ll learn what that is at E3.